Ann Curry

Max Page famously – and adorably – channeled The Force in a popular Super Bowl commercial for Volkswagen, and now the 7-year-old is hoping that the powers will be with him as he undergoes open-heart surgery Thursday.

The operation will be the eighth surgery for Page, who was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect when he was only 3 months old, his parents said on Wednesday's Today show, hours before Max was set to check into the hospital.

Asked by Today show co-host Ann Curry in a live studio interview Friday if she and Kanye West are an item, Kardashian, 31, would say only, "Kanye and I have been friends for years. ... You never know what the future holds."

Part of Kardashian's reticence might stem from, as she herself mentioned, the fact that she and Humphries are still legally married.

The NBC morning host first joked that he was developing a new show in which viewers could tune in every day and "see the host lose a little bit more of his hair." Failing that, Lauer said, "This is my family, this is my show ... let's keep going."

His co-host Ann Curry and weatherman Al Roker applauded, and Curry called his announcement "a huge bit of great news."

Meredith Vieira ended her five-year run as the Today show co-anchor surrounded not only by colleagues Matt Lauer, Al Roker and Ann Curry (who will follow Vieira into the co-host chair), but also by husband Richard Cohen and family dog Jasper, as well as fans in the throng outside Rockefeller Center's Studio 1A.

As the two-hour send-off progressed – broken up by other news stories – highlight clips were shown, including her singing along with Julie Andrews and the movie cast of The Sound of Music, her asking Madonna why she showed up so late to the studio ("The hair," explained the singer"), and her offering to polish Colin Firth's Oscar.

And there were snippets showing her travels on behalf of the show and the personal touches she brought to covering stories (especially where children were concerned), to say nothing of the hugs from her interview subjects. And those smiles.

TV's game of musical chairs took a not-unexpected twist on Monday with Meredith Vieira's on-air announcement that, after a five-year run, she will be leaving the Today show next month. She will be succeeded by the show's 14-year news anchor, Ann Curry.

"This is a difficult day for me. I'm trying hard to hold it together," Vieira, 57, said as she teetered between laughter and tears. Her final day will be "in a few weeks," said co-host Matt Lauer.

Vieira said she wants to spend more time with her husband and children.

Meredith Vieira, who has been rumored to be considering leaving her gig as co-host on the morning show, is indeed moving on, a network source tells PEOPLE.

"Meredith has decided she simply does not want to continue with the grind of a daily morning news show," says the source. "This isn't about leaving to tend to her family – it's about being done with the phase of her career that requires this sort of a daily, on-air commitment. This didn't come out of the blue and is something she's talked about for some time."

While a sex scandal brews at rival CBS over a certain late-night host, NBC has some skeletons in this closet that the network seems to be voluntarily exposing on its own.

Jay Leno on Tuesday night added a brief post-script to a Today show segment earlier in the day about mentoring. As a result, a shocking secret about Meredith Vieira's early career came to light, prompting a sharp observation on Wednesday's Today show from her cohort Al Roker that even seemed to shock the good-natured Vieira and the always-stoic Ann Curry.

A good way to start the day with a smile, gang. – Stephen M. Silverman

Melissa EtheridgeWith a history of breast cancer in her family, Melissa Etheridge has always been vigilant about regular self-exams and mammograms. "The rule is, 10 years before you hit the age your mother was at the time of her diagnosis, you should start getting a baseline mammogram," says her pal Rosie O'Donnell. "Melissa was very up on that." Even so, Etheridge, 43, was stunned when she learned the first week in October that she had breast cancer. "Wow," she wrote on her Web site, "I didn't see this coming."

"Today" show host Katie Couric doesn't have Donald Trump's hair, but NBC is hoping she will have The Donald's moxie when it comes to dismissing candidates from her morning show's upcoming series, "The Intern."